(ip)se veniet et salvos no-
s faciet. Co. ecce virgo
concipiet et pariet fili-
um et vocabitur no-
men eius hemanuel.
Off(ertoriu)m prope
es tu domine et omnes
He himself shall come and shall
make us saved. Behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son
and his name shall be
called Emmanuel. You are near, O Lord, and all
This page made of vellum (prepared calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin) was produced in the late Middle Ages, probably between the 13th and 15th centuries in Italy or Spain. It was purchased in New York City in 1974 for $25 by Professor James Svendsen, who donated it to the University of Utah Marriott Library in 2018. Dr. Svendsen provided the transcription, translation and commentary.
“The texts from the Old Testament are written in the Latin of the 14th c. Vulgate attributed to St. Jerome. They utilize the musical notation of Gregorian Chant with two clefs (fa/do), rests, custos, neumes etc. The most frequent neumes (names of notes sung on a single syllable) are the punctum, melisma, qualism, climacus etc. The five-line staff & custos (the Latin word for “guard” and a small note at the end of a line indicating the next note) are products of 13th century Italy, replacing the earlier four-line staff, and provide a terminus post quem for the manuscript. There are four illuminated letters (E, P, B, O) at the beginning of initial words. The abbreviations CO. (for collectum) and OFFM. (for offertorium) indicate when the hymns would be sung during the mass: the collect before the readings and the offertory when gifts are brought to the altar.
These particular hymns were sung during the mass on the 4th Sunday of Advent and on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The first two relate the prophecy of Isaiah and thus emphasize the main theme of Advent, a time preparing for the birth of the Christ child, who is called Emmanuel meaning “God with us” in Hebrew. The prophecy in Isaiah 7, 14 is fulfilled in the New Testament when the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph and explains that Mary has conceived and will bear a son (Matthew 1, 21-23).”
We are grateful to Dr. Svenson for this wonderful gift.
Viae tuae veritas
initio cogno-
vi te de testimoniis
tuis quia in eternum tu
es. V(ersus). beati immacula-
ti in via qui ambulant in lege
domini r(esponsum). Osten-
de nobis domine (misericordiam tuam)
your ways are truth.
From the beginning I knew
you from your testimonies
that you are eternal. Blessed are the immaculate
on the way who walk in the law
of the Lord. Show
us, O Lord, (your mercy)…
Long years have passed,
my memory is feeble
through much suffering…
I cannot now bring
the details to mind…
Yet echoes…
Ligeia: A Libretto
Robert Creeley (19267-2005)
New York City: Granary Books, 1996
PS3505 R43 L454 1996
Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “Ligeia,” originally published in American Museum, 1838. Robert Creeley completed this operatic translation in summer 1992. Poe’s narrative informs Creeley’s vocabulary, rhythms and rhetorical emphasis, producing a new and unique work. It first appeared in TO magazine, Summer 1995.
Illustrations by Alex Katz. Designed and printed letterpress by Philip Gallo at The Hermetic Press. Paper is Somerset Wove. Typefaces are Trump Mediaeval Roman, Italic and Semi Bold, with Felix Titling, Delphin I and II, and Serpentine Oblique for display. Worm and mirror-image created using Freehand, Illustrator, and Photoshop. Bound by Jill Jevne.
Edition of one hundred and thirty-five copies, the first thirty-five of which are press numbered and hors commerce. Rare Books copy is no.l 43, signed by the author and illustrator.
Out — out are the lights — out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
and its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Here are some of the pieces chosen by the Rare Books staff for this episode:
ARKA
Timothy C. Ely
Portland, OR: T. Ely, 1995
N7433.4 E35 A7 1995
The book is drawn on BFK gray paper that was brush-sized with gelatin and CMC, then under painted with CMC and acrylic paint. Other materials include ink, Graphite, and watercolor. Each folio is sewn onto four raised cords that, on completion of the sewing, were laced into birch plywood boards. The end bands are silk worked over cores of leather. The spine of the book is goatskin. The board pastedowns are painted paper. The boards have a small amount of gold tooling suggestive of one part of the history and technology of the art of binding. Otherwise the cover boards are painted. The book is contained in a wooden box.
Hunting the Burn
Alicia Bailey
Lake City, CO: Ravenpress, 1998
N7433.4 B22 H86 1998
Two-sided leporello with self in-folded covers and removable spines. One side is Carolyn Hull’s poem “Hunting the Burn,” laserprinted on Basingwerk, overcoated with wax and pigment; the other side is a panoramic painting by Alicia Bailey, digitally reworked and printed with color inkjet on Arches 90 lb. cover and overcoated with wax. Four of the twelve panels have hand-cut rectangular openings with mixed media insertions. Covers are black Canson with hand applied enamel. Title piece is laserfoil on black paper. Spine pieces are black embossed paper laminated to black Canson. The box is paper-mache, gesso and pigmented wax. Box top has metal mesh and hemp-wrapped, wax-covered bullet attached. Inside box are stones and feathers. Edition of twenty copies, signed by Alicia Bailey and Carolyn Hull. Rare Books copy is no. 10.
Surplus Value Books: Catalog Number 13
Rick Moody
Santa Monica, CA: Danger! Books, 2002
N7433.4 M644 S6 2002
Deluxe edition presented as a collector’s box, containing two pens, one felt tip marker, one white-out correction pen, one pencil, one wooden nickel, one photograph with loop, seven photographs of “original artwork for placement only,” and other items. Text is composed in the form of galley proofs. Upon removing the galley holding the text, the reader is presented with a removable panel resembling a hospital release checklist. Holes cut into this panel reveal the objects contained below. The collectible objects in the box act as literal illustrations to the story. The narrator of the story is a bookseller, collector, mental patient. The story is told through the description of books for sale in the bookseller’s catalog. Values are assigned to each item in the catalog according to the bookseller’s inherent personal desire for each item. Themes of value, voyeurism, and deceit are presented as a pathology of collecting through the multiple layering of information and the revealing of objects of desire that are contained in the collector’s box. This work was first published in offset. Collector’s box constructed by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage. Rare Books copy is lettered “H.”
43, According to Robin Price with Annotated…
Robin Price
Middletown, CT: Robin Price, 2007
N7433.4 P753 A15 2007
From the colophon: “Paper maps from locations along the 43rd parallel are bound in an accordion that structurally supports the main text, which is printed on graph paper and also hinged together as an accordion (opening to 20 ft.)…The unusual double-layer accordion, housed in a printed cloth-covered clamshell box, is co-designed and co-produced by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage…” Edition of eighty-six plus twelve deluxe copies. Rare books copy is no. 23.
The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances
Jen Bervin
New York City: Granary Books, 2008
N7433.4 B47 D47 2008
An altered book is a form of mixed media artwork that takes a book from its original form into a different form, altering its meaning. The artist may take an old or new book and cut, tear, glue, burn, fold, paint, add collage, create pop-ups, rubber-stamp, drill, bolt or be-ribbon the book to create a new work that is the expression of the artist. In this case, it is the text that is altered — by sewing over certain passages and leaving others exposed. The text from which Jen Bervin’s poem emerges is The Desert, written by John Van Dyke (1856-1932), a professor of Art History at Rutgers University. Van Dyke, the author of several books on art theory of the Art-For-Art’s-Sake school, claimed to have spent three years in the American Southwest desert with only his fox terrier for company and a pony for transportation. According to Van Dyke, he carried with him a rifle, a pistol, a hatchet, a shovel, blankets, tin pans and cups, dried food and a gallon of water. His romantic rhapsody of this trip, published in 1901, was a big hit, extremely influential and remains in print. In fact, Van Dyke saw most of the great desert over which he swooned looking out the windows of trains on his way from one first-class hotel to another. The Desert, version 1901, is the fact-faulted, fantastic hoax of a well-bred, well-educated Easterner, in much the same way that Harvard-educated New Englander Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian (1902) is a glorification of an American West culture that didn’t exist. Prose poem adaptation with overlay of zig zag stitches in pale blue thread. Composed and sewn at James Turrell’s Roden Crater on the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour in October, 2006. Housed in a hinged archival case. Issued in a wrapper of white muslim cloth and white felt stitched together with blue thread.
Justice: What is Justice?
Thomas Ingmire
T. Ingmire, 2009
N7433.4 I48 J87 2008
Handmade paper mounted over board, Chinese Sumi ink, wide-edged pen (Automatic pen), Japanese brush.
The Latest Things in Kites
Christopher Fritton
Ferrum Wheel Press, 2014
PS3606 R58 L37 2014
Artist’s statement: “A chapbook produced for Carrier Pigeon magazine as as tip-in, The Latest Things in Kites borrows language and its title from a chapter in the book, Fun for Boys. The chapbook is a single-sheet, four-page fold-over with rounded corners and a small embroidery thread tail. Handset in 14pt Goudy Bold and 10pt Goudy with antique copper cuts on Mohawk Via vellum. Hand letterpressed.” Edition of 1200 copies.
Whitman Crosshatch
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
East Hampton, NY: 2015
PS3222 A7 2015
“Because you thought I was given the key to that library, becoming in that regard its keeper, I was able to become a triumphant blur, an unmistakeable hum in the night. These are the corridors where I wandered, a shrouded, lightning haunted landscape at the edge of sight, a ruined world, that memory, that deceiver, cannot shake loose.” — John Yau
Movies as a Form of Reincarnation
John Yau and Archie Rand
New York City: Granary Books, 2004
PS3575 A9 M68 2004
Text by John Yau. From the colophon: “Images are digitally manipulated photocollages created and hand-colored by Archie Rand. The book was designed at Granary Books: the types used are Caslon Antique and Evil of Frankenstein; Silicon Gallery Fine Arts Prints in Philadelphia printed the book on the Iris 3047 using Lyson Quad-Black Neutral ink. The text stock is Somerset Book 175 gsm. Bound in cloth over boards by Judith Ivry in New York City during the summer of 2004.” Edition of forty copies (1-25 for sale; 26-40 hors commerce) each signed by the poet and the artist. Rare Books copy is no. 29.
“Everything corresponds. Sweet is easy: happiness. Tanginess is trickier: people going the wrong way and calling it right; the tendency not to complain while harboring envious and covetous feelings. Sourness is things you like and don’t like — woven together. Smokiness is slow vision, seeing gradually the good things in life. What we find distasteful? That’s bitterness.”
Tea: Time in Korea
Greta Sibley
Easthampton, MA: Small Offering Press, 1994
DS904 S53 1994
Text and photographs based on three trips to Sonam Temple, South Cholla Province, Korea. Binding and box designed and produced by Daniel Kelm, Wide Awake Garage. Edition of twenty-five copies. Rare Books copy no. 14, signed by the author and the binder.
Wire-edge binding utilizes a thin metal wire along the hinging edge of each page. The metal wire is exposed at regular intervals, creating knotting stations where thread attaches one page to the next. The result is a binding that opens exceptionally well and provides the option of producing unusual shapes. This workshop presents various wire-edge structures useful for books, enclosures, and articulated sculpture. Participants produce both a simple codex and an accordion model that forms a tetrahedron. All levels of experience are welcome.
Daniel E. Kelm is a book artist who enjoys expanding the concept of the book. He is known for his innovative structures as well as his traditional work. In the mid-1980s, Daniel invented a style of bookbinding called wire-edge binding in order to explore the nature of the book as articulated sculpture. His expression as an artist emerges from the integration of work in science and the arts. Alchemy is a common theme in his bookwork. Daniel received formal training in chemistry and taught at the University of Minnesota and is known for his extensive knowledge of materials. Daniel teaches widely, and founded the Garage Annex School for Book Arts (GAS) in 1990. Most recently, with long-time collaborator Timothy Ely, Daniel co-delivered a lecture on The Alchemy of the Handmade Book at the Getty Center as a complement to the exhibition The Alchemy of Color in Medieval Manuscripts.
Rare Books is pleased to support the Book Arts Program with its collections.
“Decadence is sophistication severed from genuine feeling.”
Synesthesia
Terence K. McKenna (1946-2000)
New York City: Granary Books, 1992
N7433.4 M4285 S95 1992
Drawn and painted images by Timothy Ely. Typography and printing by Philip Gallo at The Hermetic Press. Paper is Rives BFK. Bookbinding by Daniel Kelm and staff, Wide Awake Garage. Edition of seventy five copies, twenty hors commerce. Rare Books copy is no. 47, signed by the author, printer and binder.
“I decide to go down the mountain to get a jar of fig sugar. The houses below feel very flimsy. I am greeted in one, by a cat that chases me barking like a dog back up the hill with an empty peanut butter jar.”
Venus Unbound
Jane Sherry
New York City: Granary Books, 1993
N7433.4 S418 V46 1993
The writer dreams. From the colophon: “The images were printed from metal plates made from the artist’s original paintings then treated with extensive hand-work: gouache, pen & ink, rubber stamps and collage…” Typography and printing by Philip Gallo at The Hermetic Press. Binding designed by Daniel Kelm. Box made by Jill Jevne. Edition of forty-one copies, eleven lettered. Rare Books copy is “A/P 2/2, signed by the author.
“The moon empties of light and is called new.”
Four Chambers, Five Nights
Greta Sibley
Easthampton, MA: Small Offerings Press, 1999
N7433.4 S5453 F68 1999
Text designed and composed by the author. Imagery created by Joseph A. Osina. Letterpress printed by Arthur Larson of Horton Tank Graphics. Binding and folders designed by Daniel E. Kelm at The Wide Awake Garage. Edition of twenty copies. Rare Books copy is no. 14.
“This is Geoffrey Babbitt’s first book. His poems and essays have appeared in North American Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Notre Dame Review, TYPO, Tarpaulin Sky, The Collagist, Interim, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. Raised in Boise, Idaho, he studied at Connecticut College and earned his Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Utah. Geoffrey currently coedits Seneca Review and teaches at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes region of New York, where he lives with poet Kathryn Cowles and their three daughters.”
Geoffrey acknowledges the help of many friends, colleagues and faculty from the University of Utah including Luise Poulton, Karen Brennan, Craig Dworkin, Julie Gonnering Lein, Cami Nelson, Paisley Rekdal, Jerry Root, Tom Stillinger, Shira Dentz, Elizabeth Peterson, and others.
Congratulations, Geoffrey!
MS Fragment: 4 — Date: ca. 1375 — Origin: France (possibly northeastern) — current location: Marriott Library, University of Utah, Special Collections, Rare Book Division — Materials: Ink, and burnished gold on vellum — Illustration: Detail — Size: 7 1/8 in. x 5 7/16 in. — Section: Anglo-Norman Litany of Saints — Script: littera gothica textualis formata
“vines scritched, chrysalis
onto vellum leaf–all
lost color, stolen thunder
–spiritual curl
of the vine tending
ultimately toward–tattered edge
curling from the gutters…”
MS Fragment: 8 — Date: ca. 1425-1450 — Origin: France (possibly Paris) — Current Location: Marriott Library, University of Utah, Special Collections, Rare Books Division — Materials: Ink, and burnished gold on vellum — Size: 7 1/4 in. x 5 3/16 in. — Illustration: Detail, border — section: Office of the Dead, Vespers — Script: littera gothica textualis
“lit border
buoys — acanthus
place setting
scribe sets — rinceaux
sprays, gilded ivy leaf,
bryony tendrils, gold pavé
fleur-de-lis — heliotropic
buoyancy — motor cells in
the pulvinus synthesize
bouncing light, con-
vert eye movement, displace
page’s gravitropic
polar auxin transport —
downwarding becomes lift”
“But to go on from here
When it has all come back, bread
On the waters, for life is
This emptying and filling the
Rivers big at their head
Swollen as big as at the mouth,
Shall we begin earlier next time,
Push the seeds to the surface?”
Faster Than Birds Can Fly
John Ashbery (1927-2017)
New York City: Granary Books, 2009
PS3501 S475 F37 2009
This poem first appeared in The World #20 (1970). Illustrations by Trevor Winkfield. Typography by Philip Gallo at the Hermetic Press. Printing by Silicon Gallery Fine Art Prints. Binding by Judith Ivry. Edition of forty copies. Rare Books copy is no. 40, signed by the poet and the artist.
“The question isn’t is art up to this but what else is art for?”
Some of These Daze
Charles Bernstein (b. 1950)
NYC: Granary Books, 2005
PS3552 E7327 S65 2005
Drawings by Mimi Gross. From the publisher’s website: “Beginning on September 22, 2001, Mimi Gross filled five sketchbooks with ink drawings made on the downtown streets, often working in the dark, directly at Ground Zero. Simultaneously, Charles Bernstein was…writing in response to the events of 9/11. Gross proposed a collaboration after hearing Bernstein read his new writings at the Zinc Bar in New York City on September 30, 2001. Gross and Bernstein together made a selection of images and text for the book.
Some of These Daze was produced by Katherine Kuehn at Granary Books. It was printed in silkscreen in several colors by Luther Davis, at Axelle Fine Arts. Ltd., spiral bound at Print Icon and cased-in with printed cloth over boards by Judith Ivry.”
Edition of seventy-five copies, of which sixty are for sale. Rare Books copy is no. 70, signed by the poet and artist.
For artist’s statements read this post from Jacket2.
“This month is generally ushered in with boisterous wind and nipping frosts. The hapless mariner beholds his vessel wrecked upon the very rocks which bind his much-loved home. Vegetation perishes through severe and untimely ires!; and deluging rains, descending with impetuous force crush the springing blade, and despoil the beauty of the gay parterre. Even thus do the rude passions of man’s soul break forth with resistless force at this unsettled period of existence, wrecking the fragile bark of youth. The tide of dissipation sweeps away the principles of virtue, which have not had time to take root, and every noble energy is blighted by the influence of bad example.”
Happy Spring!
The Farmer’s Diary, or, Beers’ Ontario Almanack, for the Year of our Lord 1824
Canandaigua, NY: Printed and sold, wholesale and retail, by J. D. Bemis, 1824
AY256 N5 F26
For all their necessity, American almanacs in the early nineteenth century assumed that most farmers understood, without printed confirmation, events such as the beginning of spring. Nonetheless, warnings such as the one above about the ravages of early spring weather, not to mention the unsettling effect it has on the “fragile bark of youth,” pervaded these sage documents. As evidenced here, spring fever was alive and well in 1824.
Attorney Andrew Beers acted as chief polymath for several almanacs in New York City before he moved to Albany in 1797. He began working with printers in western New York towns wanting to issue almanacs particular to their areas. Newspaperman and publisher James D. Bemis of Canandaigua, nine miles from the home of Joseph Smith, turned to Beers for help with astronomical, monetary and other calculations invaluable to local farmers and businessmen. Bemus was the editor of the Ontario Repository and Genesee Advertiser. Ontario County, New York was home to Joseph Smith and his family between 1816 and 1830.
Text & Image in Flag Books
Karen Hanmer, instructor
July 7
Thursday, 9:00–5:00
Book Arts Studio, J. Willard Marriott Library, Level 4
Application for this workshop is closed.
The foundation of Hedi Kyle’s deceptively small and simple book flag book structure is an accordion folded spine. Flaps attached to both sides of each of the spine’s mountain folds allow the artist to fragment and layer a number of complementary or contrasting images and narratives. When the flag book spine is pulled fully open, the fragmented images on the flaps come together to create a large, panoramic image. Participants experiment with complementary and contrasting text and images and discuss the effects of different spine and page dimensions, direction of motion, and which images are most successful. Students learn a tidy, non-adhesive method of covering boards and use a jig to facilitate quicker, more precise assembly. While this is not a computer class, digital printing and setting up Photoshop templates for pages, covers and spines is demonstrated.
– – – – –
Karen Hanmer’s artists’ books are physical manifestations of personal essays intertwining history, culture, politics, science and technology. She utilizes both traditional and contemporary book structures, and the work is often playful in content or format. Hanmer exhibits widely, and her work is included in collections ranging from Tate Britain and the Library of Congress to UCLA and Graceland. Solo exhibition venues include Florida Atlantic University, University of the West of England Bristol, and the Center for Book Arts (NYC). Curated exhibition venues include the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Brooklyn Museum, Harvard University’s Fogg Museum of Art, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft; and traveling exhibitions sponsored by the Guild of Book Workers (US), Designer Bookbinders (UK) the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists’ Guild, and Les Amis de la Reliure d’Art du Canada.
Letter Home
Karen Hanmer
Glenview, IL: K. Hanmer, 2004
N7433.4 H357 L48 2004
Hedi Kyle flag book structure. One side of each flag has text, the other side of each flag has a color image which is part of a family photograph. The family photograph becomes whole when the accordion folds are stretched and the pages fall open. Text is from a letter written from Italy in 1954 by a military wife to her relatives. Upper and lower boards are covered in reproduction of a photograph of an American woman [the artist’s mother] on a balcony overlooking Florence, Italy. Issued in an artist-made phase box of green map folder stock with fabric hook-and-loop fasteners.
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